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I attended an advance screening of THE DILEMMA starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James. It was a nice, kind of sweet story about the bonds of male friendship. The titular “dilemma” is that Vaughn’s character, (Ronny), finds out that his best friend Nick’s wife has been cheating on him. Ronny has to figure out how to tell him.
I doubt that this film will do very well in the theaters. Fans of Vince Vaughn and Kevin James will be disappointed because the film is not very funny. At all. It’s not that the humor fell flat; there was just very little comedy to begin with. For a large part of the film, they weren’t even trying to be funny. By far the biggest flaw is that the tone is all over the place. It goes from a little comedy to a lot of drama and then back to comedy again. Some of the moments between the two friends were genuinely touching, but there were a lot of dramatic moments that came off as heavy-handed.
It’s just one of those movies that wasn’t sure what it wanted to be so it doesn’t really come together very well. Vince Vaughn showed surprising range and was able to get at least a little bit outside his usual “Vince Vaughn” character that he plays in so many movies. Channing Tatum’s portrayal of the “the other man” was a riot and was, for me, the highlight of the film. If there had been more confrontation and interaction between Ronny and him, it would have made the film funnier. Queen Latifah makes an appearance as well, though she is also underused.
I suspect the film will do well when it opens this weekend, then will drop off substantially as Vaughn and James’ fans are warned that if they are looking for a good comedy, they won’t find it here.